How can important memories be conveyed to the next generation? In Japan, a country of forests and mountains, work methods that have long been at the heart of mountain life – like tree cutting, slash and burn agriculture, and roof thatching – are quietly disappearing in the course of modernisation. Recently, some Japanese high school students have gone up to the mountains to see the people who live there and possess these skills, asking them about their craft and about life itself… writing down what they hear, word for word, unchanged, just as it was spoken. This documentary takes a close look at the lives of four such masters of life in the mountains and the four high school students who learnt from them, capturing the moments when, by listening and recording, memories were transmitted from one to the other.
